If the Dead Could Fall in Love
by with-a-flower-in-her-hair
Summary: ‘My name is Draco Malfoy. I was seventeen years old when I was captured, tortured, and murdered by the men my father still calls his friends. No stone marks my grave, and no flowers adorn my final...' Draco looks down from the afterlife. One-sided H/D.


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Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be.

Genre: Tragedy, Hurt/ Comfort

Warnings: Extremely brief mention of murder

Summary: 'My name is Draco Malfoy. I was seventeen years old when I was captured, tortured, and murdered by the men my father still calls his friends... No stone marks my grave, and no flowers adorn my final, eternal resting place. It is as if I simply vanished.' Draco looks down from the afterlife. One-sided H/D.

A/N Constructive criticism is always welcomed. Actually, clutched onto and hugged! I love being told how to improve, so any comments you have to give me are always greatly appreciated.

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My name is Draco Malfoy. I was seventeen years old when I was captured, tortured, and murdered by the men my father still calls his friends. No-one mourned for me when I died, not even my father, and my mother has never been told. My mother, bless her soul, still believes me to be alive and well, fighting for the rights so many pure-blood wizards believe to be rightfully ours. She believes me still to be among the inner folds of the Dark Lord's ranks, and proudly talks of me to her only friends; the wives of Death Eaters. None of them know what happened to me, and none of them ever will. When the time finally comes, when it has been too long to hide the truth from her for any longer, they will tell her that I was murdered by a member of the Order of the Phoenix. Not a high ranking member – no matter what my mother may boast to her friends, I was never important enough for many in the Order to bother with me – but a new addition, perhaps, or an old teacher who once taught at the school.

There was one who bothered with me though; one member of the Order, more important than the rest of them put together. Throughout our school years he taunted me, loathed me, and, at times, obsessed over me. In return, I bullied him. Looking back, I have done nothing I am more ashamed of than that, and it is the only wish my stilled heart holds onto, even now, that I could go back to when we met, and change how I behaved. Not even the dead have that power though, and I am forced to watch, as day by day the one person who ever took an interest in me, albeit to hate and despise me, grows into something more amazing than I would ever have believed possible, without ever needing, or even wanting my help. I can't say when it started to happen, but as I watched him, it grew slowly inside me; a tiny bud of raw emotion, desperate to reach out to him. I wanted to hold him, and kiss him, and wipe away the tears which appear on his cheeks every time he is alone. He is in so much pain, I see that now, and my regret over the way I treated him deepens daily. If it were possible for the dead to fall in love, I would say that is what is happening to me.

He has no idea that I watch him. He has no idea how much my cold heart aches to be with him, or how the tears I never thought the dead could shed have run down my face thinking of how he still loathes me. He probably, to be truthful, still has no idea I am dead. He rarely thinks of me, and has never once turned his mind to the idea that I might no longer be with the living. I don't blame him. Why would he? My body, had he ever thought to look, lies buried in a clearing in a darkened wood, overhung with branches. No stone marks my grave, and no flowers adorn my final, eternal resting place. It is as if I simply vanished.

Death, is nothing like I imagined it would be. There are no gates welcoming me into a paradise filled with lost loved ones. There are no fields stretching out into an eternal, sun-filled day. There are no memory filled rooms, where I can relive every happy birthday, or Christmas morning I hold so dear. There is simply a perpetual, white mist, through which I can look down upon the world. I wear no clothes; there is no need. There is no-one here to see me. I feel no hunger, or pain, or warmth, or fatigue. I have no need for home comforts, or even shelter. There is no weather here; no sun, no rain. Nothing changes, it simply _is_. I don't know if this is how Death is for everyone. I don't know, even, if there is a paradise to go to, which I have simply been denied entry to. Perhaps this is my own, private hell; my penance, to spend the rest of eternity watching the living, never able to join them. To watch the person I have come to respect, admire, _love_, more than I would have believed possible, suffer alone.

He will defeat the Dark Lord, of that I have no doubt. He is stronger than anyone has ever realised, and purer, even, than Dumbledore believed. But he will suffer, he will suffer so, so much, and it is like a stab of ice through my long frozen heart each time I acknowledge that there is nothing I can do to help him. He is the only person I have ever wanted to help, the only person I have ever cared for other than myself. I am selfish by nature, often to the point of cruelty. Even in Death, I am able to acknowledge that fact. It just never occurred to me, that there might be someone for whom I would defy that nature, for whom I would _want _to defy it.

It is night now, down with the living, and he is sleeping. He looks so peaceful in sleep. It is the one time he looks his age; his eyelids hiding the pain-filled orbs, so captivating in their intensity. I wish, with all my heart, that I could reach down to earth, gather him in my arms and sooth his worries away. But the dead have no such power, and I realised the importance he held for me too late to be of any use whilst I was living. He will never know that I love him now, or that I have spent each and every day since my death watching over him.

He will never know that I love him.

Draco Malfoy; murdered son of a Death Eater, in love with Harry Potter; soon-to-be saviour of the Wizarding World.

If I was still among the living, I would laugh from the irony of it all.

It seems that Fate, has a twisted sense of humour.

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